I Won't Be the Empress (Transmigrate into a Book)

Going VIP on Thursday, June 8. Chapters 25 through 35 will be locked retroactively. If you have already read them, please do not purchase them again. Thank you for your support.

Coming soon: The Substitute Bride

Princess Xiao Lan is born with bewitching beauty and incomparable grace, but she suddenly develops a serious illness that mars her appearance and leaves her unable to bear children.

Everyone says her marriage to the God of War, Wei Lin, is off. To their surprise, they still marry, and outsiders all say Wei Lin is devoted and faithful.

Only Xiao Lan knows it is all an act. The man treats her with courtesy and respect, but does not love her.

By chance, she discovers that he is keeping a woman hidden away. Instead of getting angry, she laughs: At last, she has a chance to divorce him!

One day, she follows the man to the mansion where he keeps his mistress. She searches every inch of the place but finds no woman.

Just then, a number of paintings drift over. She picks one up and studies it for a long time, thinking: How familiar!

A palace attendant cries out, "This is the princess at the hunting grounds when she was six!"

"That one is her climbing the tower at seven, beating the drums at eight, boating at nine, racing horses at ten, playing cuju at eleven... all the way up to her wedding at sixteen."

Every painting is inscribed: My beloved Xiao Lan.

But the signature reads: Wei Jin?

Xiao Lan's eyes widen in shock: My younger uncle has had a crush on me all along!

-

Wei Lin refuses to marry a princess with flaws in both her appearance and her health, so he orders his half-brother to keep impersonating him.

Wei Jin has long hated wearing Wei Lin's face. Just as he is about to refuse, he hears: Marry Xiao Lan in my place. Pretend to be her husband for a year.

His thin lips curl into a smile. "All right."

Less than half a year later, Wei Lin suddenly realizes how beautiful Xiao Lan is. He changes his mind that very day, intending to drive his half-brother away and then kill him to eliminate any future trouble. He warns him in a calm voice: "You must not touch her."

As soon as he finishes speaking, a voice sweet enough to melt his bones calls out, "Elder brother." The princess approaches gracefully, her slightly rounded belly a radiant sign of pregnancy.

His half-brother wraps an arm around her waist and smiles at him. "Too late."

Then someone tells Wei Lin that the supposed cure for Xiao Lan's infertility is actually his!

Princess Xiao Lan x Wei Jin, the marquis's half-son who has plotted this for a long time, and who everyone else thinks is the marquis's legitimate son.

Note:

1. Wei Jin is the male lead.

2. Wei Lin gets his just deserts.

Novel blurb

Domestic life # Marriage first, love later

After transmigrating into a book, Xie Chuhan becomes a love-struck supporting female character.

On her wedding night, the original host makes a heartfelt confession: She promises to be a virtuous wife, then gets kicked out.

Xie Chuhan transmigrates in...

Snow falls thickly, and the cold is so bitter that people are nearly frozen. The heir inside complains that the sound of her shivering is too loud and sends her to a side courtyard.

The original host spent her whole life being virtuous and still failed to warm the heir's heart. Xie Chuhan has no intention of being virtuous. She turns and leaves. The prince's residence is huge, so she'll find somewhere else to sleep.

A servant reports to the heir: "Madam has gone to the princess consort."

The heir frowns. "Call her back to be punished."

Instead, his mother makes him kneel all night. What?

-

After marriage

Gu Cheng often dreams of a woman. He cannot make out her face, but she is gentler and more considerate than his wife, with the grace of an immortal and lovely arched brows. She devotes herself to him, and seems to call him "Xue Te."

Yet he searches all across the Great Yang and finds no one by that name.

One day, he sees his elder brother and his wife smiling brightly at each other. "Xue Te is a pretty hard name to remember..."

Gu Cheng: Is that his wife's other name? How does his brother know it!

-

Xie Chuhan "carefully" tends to Gu Cheng's daily needs.

Today, his trousers have a hole. The day before yesterday, his boot sole came loose. Last month, his waterskin leaked and soaked him. The month before that, she handed him the wrong memorial, and his headpiece cracked...

Every single thing pushes against Gu Cheng's limits. "What exactly do you think it means to be virtuous?"

Xie Chuhan says tactfully: "If I can't do it well, would you like to find someone else?"

The man in the book, who had wanted a divorce in every possible way, smashes his cup. "If you can't do it well, then..."

Xie Chuhan waits for the classic line, "Get lost," but all she hears is the man gritting out, "...I'll do it myself!"

"...?"

-

After he ascends the throne, people start saying that Xie Chuhan is unfit to be empress.

The empress must come from the imperial clan, a prominent family, or a merchant family is not acceptable.

A woman may enter the imperial harem as a consort, but she must stop practicing medicine and teaching, as both go against ancestral rules.

A virtuous consort should...

Xie Chuhan apologizes: I am not virtuous, and I will not enter the harem.

The ministers submit memorials urging him to select women for the harem. They wait eagerly and wait, until years later, when the crown prince is invested. The prince's mother has become a physician renowned throughout the land, her students scattered far and wide, while the imperial harem remains empty...

One-on-one, both are each other's first, happy ending. The male lead is a jerk, but the female lead knows how to handle one.

Updates at 9 a.m. or noon.

Blurb dated 2023.03.08

Theme: A woman who loves herself, delights in herself, and enjoys being herself is the most beautiful.